


may the trees bend down to greet you.

by rainydays



Series: a city and the lives within [1]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Making A Home, anthropomorphized cities, ish, nature as feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 02:49:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18274259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainydays/pseuds/rainydays
Summary: It's tough, moving as much as hockey players do. It's easier, really, for Philipp to just think of where he was born as his home, rather than readjust after every relocation.His cities, though, try to convince him otherwise.





	may the trees bend down to greet you.

**Author's Note:**

> This is really a love letter to some beautiful cities.

It’s been almost ten years since he’s really lived in Rosenheim, but Philipp thinks it’ll always be home. It’s nice to come back, to see his old friends and his mom and the rest of his family.

He might not admit it, but it’s sweet to have someone fuss over him, and it’s settling to hear German. Not that he struggles with English much anymore, or at all really, but it just calms his brain a little to hear his _der, die_ and _das_ -es, like a small knot in the back of his neck just loosens a little, like a knuckle finally popping, releasing a pressure he didn’t even know he had.

He and his mother are cleaning up from breakfast - another favorite thing about Germany: the bread, and the morning spreads. Americans don’t seem to appreciate a full, savory breakfast - when his mom begins prattling on about how the weather is always nicer when he’s home, how the usual June downpours always seem to hold off a little until he leaves for the States. He hands her the _Schinken_ to put in the fridge and tells her, deadpan, that it’s because of his sunny disposition. She tweaks his ear, laughing, before turning sincere.

“I always figured it was mother nature’s way of saying I wasn’t alone, that we both miss you when you leave.” She sighs, glancing out the window at the blue sky, before closing the fridge.

He isn’t sure how to take that, but sure enough, he never once gets caught in an afternoon rainstorm that summer.

\---

And then he gets traded. It’s a muggy day in Rosenheim when he hears the news, clouds threatening to split open at the drop of a hat. He stews in his own emotions - anger? sadness? he’s not quite sure - as the thunder rumbles in the distance.

By the time the sun starts breaking through the clouds, turning the sky pink as it sets, he’s decided to try to see it as an opportunity, a clean start. He sleeps more soundly than he expects, and wakes up to dew left over from the night’s rain covering the grass, the porch wet but not cold as he sips his coffee in the fresh air.

\---

He asked for it, sure, but it still is tough to leave DC, the city he called home for such a memorable time of his life. He flies back stateside with just enough time to get his affairs in order, say goodbye to his teammates ( _ex-teammates_ , he reminds himself) who are already in the city, and sneak in a few meals at his favorite spots, since there’s no way Denver will ever have anything that matches the homemade pop-tarts at Ted’s.

Maybe he’s just projecting his own mood, but the city itself seems to be sad when he gets ready to head out. It drizzles as he packs, and it starts pouring just after he slides into the cab. The roads are slick on the way to Dulles and, in an irony that feels more like the behaviour of a petulant child than anything else, the rain’s resulting puddles and splashes hit the window so often that they block his view as he tries to see the city one last time.

But by the time he’s checking his United app, just to make sure his flight isn’t going to get delayed in the storm, the sky clears up a little bit. As he sits in the first class lounge, the sun shines on his arm, a soft and light stroke of warmth, even as the gray rain falls in the distance.

If this is the city’s goodbye, he’ll take it.

\---

He’d been to Colorado before, sure, but moving there is tough. He feels homesick - though where for, he can’t quite decide - and he’s never seen this much _brown_.

“I didn’t even know this many shades of brown existed. Is everything dead here? Does anything actually grow?” he groans to Landy. It probably wasn’t what his captain cared about or expect to hear, per se, when he asked about how Philipp was settling in, but the thought has been gnawing at him for all of camp.

“It’s just sleeping!” Landy laughs. “Believe it or not, I actually think it’s been greener this fall than I’ve ever seen it. You’re still looking for a place to live, right? If you don’t want to live downtown, check out Cherry Creek Park area, the pup will love it. And it’s green, I promise.”

Even though he’s exhausted from practice - he thought he had kept up a good routine over the summer, but maybe Cup celebrations wore him out more than he thought - he swings by his long-term hotel to pick up Leo and head to the park. Landy was right; the trees are green, the water is a brilliant blue, and he even swears he sees small wildflowers bloom next to him as he throws the ball for Leo.

Philipp stares at the flowers, these complicated, two-layer purple clusters, trying to figure out if they really just bloomed - _isn’t this a little late in the year?_ he wonders - when Leo comes back. Apparently dissatisfied with the lack of attention, he promptly lifts a leg and pees. Right on the bulbs.

Philipp laughs in surprise, and the wind rustles through the tall grass in an echo. He picks up the ball again and throws it, watching it arc across the twinkling sun as it comes out from behind a cloud. He takes a glance at the flowers again, to see if Leo ruined them, but they only seem to shine an even more brilliant shade than they did before.

 _Maybe this city isn’t so bad,_ he thinks. Hums to himself.

\---

He finds a house, in between the practice rink and the park. His contract is only for three years, and he’s still feeling a bit uncertain about his future in the city, but everyone and their mother in Denver seems to be talking about how house prices are just going to keep rising in the city, how it’s a great investment, how any house now will make 10 percent in a year alone.

He isn’t one to quickly decide - he’s not someone who can walk into a space and suddenly feel at ease, or anything, so he isn’t really expecting to have a love-at-first-sight moment with a house, or anything - but his realtor is nice enough and is always listing off what each neighborhood has, things that he doesn’t really listen to, just figures the length of her list and the amount of excitement in her voice is probably as good of an indication as any.

It’s after they leave the fourth house, a decent find in a “recently revitalized neighborhood” with a cute street of shops down the block, or so Karen says, when it happens. He’s walking to his car and the wind picks up; he drops the fact sheet she had handed him and runs after it out of instinct more than any genuine interest in the house’s plumbing system or square footage. The chase leads him down and around the block, but the paper flies up above the buildings, out of sight. The air stills suddenly and it’s almost cliche, but when he looks up, he’s facing a storefront that steals his breath. It’s half-grocery, half-bakery, and there are _Brötchen_ sitting in the window.

It’s two in the afternoon and he’s already eaten lunch, but he buys a roll anyways. Licking the crumbs from his fingers, he texts Karen. _I’ll buy the house._

The air stirs, and he hears a flutter above him. The fact sheet lands at his feet.

\---

He’s in Denver - _at home_ , he tries to remind himself - when the bomb cyclone hits. He had heard the weather reports murmuring about the “huge blizzard coming” and the “expected high winds,” but he had kind of been hoping they’d be in Texas by the time it hit, and that he’d come back only after the snow melted.

It doesn’t really work like that. Instead, the day after they lose to the Carolina Hurricanes - 0-3, with good chances but not enough to make up for the pucks that found the back of his own net, not that he’s dwelling… the day after the game against Carolina, the bomb cyclone is all any of the boys can talk about after practice.

“We’re Canadians, how bad can it be?” Tyson Barrie tries to convince Jost, knocking him by the shoulder and sending him into Philipp for a second. “It’s just snow.”

Jost straightens up and snorts, the eye-roll evident in his tone. “Dude, you don’t get to pull the whole ‘Canadian Winter’ thing. You’re from Victoria, that doesn’t even count.”

Philipp doesn’t pretend to know a lot about the climate in North America, but he’s tempted to agree. Traveling to BC is always preferable to Edmonton or Calgary in the winter. He knows better though than to disagree with Barrie while he’s on a roll, so he keeps his eyes focused on lacing up his shoes until Coach comes in.

He tells them that practice tomorrow is canceled, warns them to stay off the roads and - maybe he heard Barrie’s conversation, or maybe he just knows people too well - looks at the Tysons directly when he reminds the team to not do anything stupid.

“We’re in a playoff push. The last thing we need is one of you slipping and bruising your ass, or driving into a pole.”

He nods, seemingly satisfied with his remarks, then wishes them a pleasant day off and heads out.

That seems to shut Barrie up, at least long enough to maybe rethink his plans of an epic snowball fight or drive to the mountains or whatever he thought would help prove his Canadian-ness, and he shuffles over to nag Landy instead about a grocery run to stockpile food.

Philipp, because he’s a capable human being, heads to the store on his own. By the time he’s parked, the group chat is already blowing up about not being able to find much food anywhere - and apparently he has a gap in his meme knowledge, or else his whole team is just weirdly obsessed with “getting the bread and milk” - but when he stops by his local store, the baker in the back is pulling a fresh set of rolls out of the oven.

Most of the 2% is gone, admittedly, but he spots a red cap behind the dairy-free cartons and pulls the last half gallon of actual milk out of the refrigerated section before grabbing some veggies ( _they solved the recall on romaine, right? or was it iceberg?,_ he wonders) and fruit. The guy next to him grumbles about the produce being picked over, but when Philipp picks them up, they all seem to be in relatively perfect ripeness, even the strawberries, which he’s pretty sure are out of season.

He’s not even sure if this blizzard will be that bad - though Kerfy seemed pretty insistent that this was the lowest pressure system to reach the state in decades, as if that meant something to Philipp - but he picks up more food than he strictly needs for one day, just in case. It seems like a good sign for his survival that his grocery store, at least, has its bread and milk.

He snaps a picture of his key purchases to send to the guys and laughs as they demand to know his secrets.

_Just lucky, I guess._

\---

The next day is, in all honesty, a bit anticlimactic. Sure, it snows, and sure, the wind picks up, but for all the horrors that the team is sending - MacKinnon can’t get out of his front door, for the five-foot-tall drift of snow that is blocking it - his street seems relatively calm. His power doesn’t go out, and his wifi and satellite work just fine; he spends most of his day on the couch, drinking coffee (then water, then hot chocolate, because it seems fitting) and curls up with Leo, who wuffles and stirs a bit when the wind howls, but seems otherwise unbothered.

Just when Leo makes his way to the back door, a sure sign of needing a bathroom break, the wind shifts directions, and his backyard is sheltered from the gusts.

\---

The weather gets warmer. His save percentage goes up. The sun starts breaking through the clouds more often than not. He gets more starts, and he wins more of them too.

It hails sometimes, but never when he’s driving. They clinch, and the season extends into summer.

He counts his blessings, and he calls the city his home.

Life is good in Denver, Colorado.


End file.
